Amid an Increasingly Incoherent Democratic Convention, Donald Trump of All People Provides a Dose of Sanity

We are halfway through the Democratic National Convention right now, and while Kamala Harris’s newly minted army of online myrmidons may feel like their souls are soaring, mine is positively snoring. The journey has been long and hard, my friends, two days already packed with interminable boredom and contentless gruel — in the words of Kevin Killeen describing February in St. Louis, “the expedition is getting desperate; people are throwing things aside.” Both Michelle and Barack Obama spoke last night — to a palpably delirious reception by the crowd in the United Center — but the main takeaway, if any, from Tuesday is probably going to be Lil Jon rapping “Turn Down for What?” as he delivered Georgia’s delegates to the Harris campaign during the formal roll call. (It even raised a smile from me.)

In other words, the DNC has proven to be a low-energy affair to date, devoid even of protester anger. (Tim Walz is speaking tonight, so I’ll be attending dressed up as a surgically implanted IVF embryo making another case about “stolen valor.”) Everybody’s happy to be there, for sure — the 2020 convention was essentially canceled due to Covid, so for many Democratic operatives, it’s the first time they’ve been able to meet up in nearly a decade. The contrast between the social energy in the arena versus the product going out over the airwaves can’t help but put one in mind of the second half of a delirious drug trip — the bad half, the terrible descent after the approaching crest of the roller coaster where all the fun is in getting up high.

Or maybe I’m wrong about that, and this is just the beginning of an ascent to the stars. I have my doubts, however, given the political incoherence on display all last night in the sequence of speakers at the convention, proof of a party so riven underneath the surface with factional disagreements that their best bet is to hire a DJ for roll call and throw a dance party instead in the hopes that everyone will forget their differences while the groove still plays.

The clash was obvious enough to anyone with enough political history under their belts to remember: Professional former Republican strategist — yes, it is an avocation on cable news media — and vehement anti-communist Nicaraguan immigrant Ana Navarro castigated Donald Trump for selling out to dictators and behaving like a Marxist tyrant. She was then followed immediately thereupon by Vermont senator and vehement pro-communist Bernie Sanders, who honeymooned in Moscow (much as Tim Walz similarly did in Tiananmen Square). Once Sanders got done with his angry socialist “power to the people” routine — through his thick NYC accent he sounded like he was commanding Democrats to take on both “Big Farmer” and “Big Egg” — he then passed the ball off to none other than the billionaire heir to the Pritzker fortune, the improbably doughy governor of Illinois, J. B. Pritzker. Pritzker then proceeded to happily boast about how many billions of dollars he’s actually worth, to insult Trump.

None of these people apparently checked their speeches against one another, which is both hilarious and indicative of the massive rifts being papered over during this convention. What we got instead is pablum. Michelle and Barack Obama both delivered decent-to-good speeches to end the night — Michelle’s was the better of the two by far, interestingly enough, and Republicans should thank God she loathes the idea of elective office — but they were purely rhetorical pitches, designed to evoke memories of how much the audience (and presumably viewers at home) loved the Obamas compared to this weak crop of choices. Other than promises to keep “pushing forward” (forward to where?) there was no real discussion of what a Harris administration would offer. Merely that it would prevent us as a nation from “going back.”

If they keep at this, I suspect that — regardless of what winds the Democrats feel blowing in their sails right now — we will, in fact, be going back. To Trump, that is. I would like to conclude by directing your attention as a reader to something seemingly unrelated, but actually quite relevant. In a moment when Kamala Harris and Tim Walz refuse to speak to the media in any way at all and Donald Trump speaks to them too much — please, not another 90-minute presser, Don — Trump did the unexpected: He sat down for an hourlong interview with stand-up comedian and podcaster Theo Von and at several moments demonstrated surprisingly candid and even moving insight into his own character, in a way that voters will rarely if ever see.

It would be too easy to describe Von as a “Joe Rogan type,” but it’s handy enough for our purposes: He’s a comedian with a politically curious mind, a lack of partisan attachment, and a knack for interviewing. His show usually focuses on people from the world of comedy but also has recently featured Rabbi David Wolpe of Harvard and Bernie Sanders, among others. Trump’s interview was something of a coup for both of them — not just as a “get” for Von but as a moment when, maybe because Trump never gets the chance to talk to someone like him at the New York Times or CNN, he found a completely different mode to his personality and actually opened up a bit about how his own family’s troubles shaped who he was.

You see, Von is a recovering drug and alcohol addict — the combo is a killer — and had absolutely no concern at all hitting Trump early on with a question that personally fascinated him: why Trump is a lifelong teetotaler. Trump answered that it’s because of watching his older brother Fred, whom he loved and admired, lose an early-acquired and lifelong battle to alcohol. (Fred’s advice to younger brother Don: “Don’t screw up like I did — don’t drink.” He took it to heart.) The discussion begins here and runs for nearly ten minutes; you should see the entire thing, but this minute’s worth of Trump suddenly becoming the interviewer himself gives you a sense of the flavor.

It’s a remarkable exchange all around. It’s not even just that Trump showed shockingly moving insight into his character — he acknowledges that if it weren’t for his older brother’s lesson, he was the sort of personality type who could have fallen into that trap — but also because he evinces genuine curiosity about Von and his experiences getting on and off drugs. By gum, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him look like he cared about something other than his own ego.

So in the midst of a Democratic convention swathed in a muted gray sense of unreality, I recommend turning to the most unlikely interview of the campaign season as an antidote. I can’t pretend that I like any of the candidates on offer this year, so I won’t. I will note, though, that while each new dose of fantasy that Harris and Walz serve up seems to be yielding increasingly marginal returns, Donald Trump — of all people — is out there actually telling voters something authentic about himself.